Geraldine Buckingham, 39

BlackRock, Global head of corporate strategy

Photo: Buck Ennis

By Aaron Elstein

As BlackRock's head of strategy, Geraldine Buckingham figures out which competitive, regulatory and political developments could affect the standing of the world's largest asset-management firm. To many of her colleagues, she's also the in-house doctor. "I get medical questions all the time," she said.

That's understandable. Before getting into finance, Buckingham completed medical school in her native Australia. She then went to England as a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford, where she worked in an emergency room while also studying public policy. But she started to find medicine too repetitive and decided to take a two-year sabbatical to try something else. In 2007 she landed at prestigious consulting firm McKinsey & Co., where she advised financial-services clients on how to manage in the postcrisis world. That led three years ago to her post at BlackRock, where she's a member of the executive committee and one of the firm's rising stars.

Busy as she is, Buckingham tries to make time to watch the grand finals of Australian rules football (imagine American football without pads and helmets, with a bouncing ball and a larger field, and you get the idea), even though the matches tend to start around 1 a.m. New York time. "I haven't lived in Australia for 13 years," she said. "This is part of it that's important to me."